


seeing what no one else could

by Draco_sollicitus



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: DamereyDaily, F/M, Flirting, High School AU, Minor Reylo Elements, One-Shot, Pre Relationship, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:27:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22287892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draco_sollicitus/pseuds/Draco_sollicitus
Summary: Rey doesn't exactly like her new high school; she's moved so many times in the recent months, and her awful foster father isn't making it any easier.There's an older boy in her classes who tells her she's beautiful, but Rey doesn't believe him for a second. It's all he can say about her or to her: that she's beautiful. And after things fall apart with him, Rey assumes that's it for any interest boys might have in her. Brief, fleeting, and only based on how she looks.But, there is another who might change her mind ..."there will be boys who will tell you you're beautiful, but only a few will see you"
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Rey
Comments: 13
Kudos: 121
Collections: Damerey Daily 2020





	seeing what no one else could

**Author's Note:**

> For the Damerey Daily prompt: _there will be boys who will tell you you're beautiful, but only a few will see you_
> 
> This is a high school AU but contains elements of the SWST, including TROS - **Rey/Kylo do kiss** , but it's brief and ... well, you'll see.

He’d been the first person to ever call her beautiful.

It caught her off-guard the first time; she glanced over in AP Calc on her second day at her new high school and saw him staring at her. Rey chalked it up to another older kid trying to intimidate the scrawny sophomore sitting in  _ their  _ class and shrugged it off. A few seconds later, a note had landed on her desk. Mr. Ackbar hadn’t noticed, only droned on with his lecture, and Rey opened it, frowning.

_ Hello, beautiful. _

Rey looked up in surprise and saw the larger boy nod at her, once, confirming that he’d been the one to throw it. She balled it up in her fist and shoved it into the back of her desk, her ears burning.

Kylo had caught up with her outside the door, and Rey hugged her books tighter to her chest when he loomed over her suddenly. “Didn’t you like my note?” he asked. His voice was deep, and Rey wasn’t sure she liked that - her foster father’s voice was deep, after all.

“I don’t want to be made fun of,” Rey said, summoning up all her courage to do so. Kylo had frowned at that.

“I’m not making fun of you.” He reached out and took the books right out of her arms, the ones she’d been holding so tightly. “Come on. I’ll walk you to second period. What do you have?”

He’d left her at the door to World History with a nod and another, “bye, beautiful,” and Rey had watched him leave, face still burning, but some quiet, small part of herself happy that  _ someone  _ had said anything to her. 

It was her third school in six months, after all. She was tired of being alone.

Kylo grabbed her arm when she walked into the lunch room - she really was sure she didn’t like that - and she tugged it away but still followed him to his lunch table. They sat and Kylo talked for a while about his family, his grandfather who he seemed to worship, his mother who he seemed to love and hate, and his - well, he didn’t talk about his father. 

Rey shrugged when he asked her for her story and whispered that she didn’t have one. That she was a Nobody. And Kylo didn’t question it, only smirked and said “I envy that,” and walked with her to fourth period.

There was another boy in the cafeteria as Kylo steered Rey through the crowd, watching them with an interest that Rey couldn’t read. Cute, with dark curling hair, and short, but solid - and, given the Chandrila High Football sweatshirt he was wearing, that wasn’t surprising.

“Are you staring at Dameron?” Kylo snapped, a mocking edge to his voice. At the sound of his name, the boy frowned.

Rey shook her head and adjusted the strap of her backpack. “Is that his name?” She asked softly, pretending she didn’t care.

Kylo swooped in and seemed to roost in her life after that; he got her phone number - called her constantly when she wasn’t texting him back - and drove her home - he drove too fast - and insisted they do their math homework together every day after school in the mansion he lived in. 

He insisted that his parents left him alone all the time, but Rey could see photos on almost every wall of a pretty woman with grey hair and a older man who was still dashing, beaming up at the camera with their arms thrown around Kylo who appeared not much younger than he was now. Also, he got her out the door before dinnertime and more than once, Rey had seen a nice, sleek sedan pull up out front as Kylo peeled down the driveway with her in the passenger seat.

After weeks of that, Kylo helped pick her up outside a bar when Unkar wouldn’t come home; she was humiliated, and miserable, and so...so …

And Kylo glanced at her in the passenger seat as she shook silently. “Hey, beautiful,” he murmured, stroking her hair behind her ears. “You’re home.”

Rey didn’t bother telling him that this crappy house they were parked outside of wasn’t her home. She could feel him leaning in over the console, she could feel his expectation, and she could feel nothing but so very horribly tired, so she turned and kissed him briefly and then popped her door open and hopped out.

“Goodnight, beautiful,” he called after her and Rey acknowledged it with a jerk of her head before slamming the door shut. “Careful with that,” he laughed before driving away.

Rey walked up the short, crumbling driveway to the crappy little house she hated and closed her eyes hard enough that not a single tear leaked out.

It was like Kylo faded away after that. He didn’t text or call - neither did Rey, to be fair - and didn’t so much as glance at her during math class. She told herself she didn’t care, but she did. Not that she cared that she wasn’t his girlfriend, or anything like that. No. Rey was tired of being disposable.

She found herself behind the school later that day, metal pole in hand (she’d found it, digging through the trash) and slamming it over and over again into an abandoned dummy that the theatre program had thrown away. Rey gritted her teeth and snarled and didn’t let herself cry, and when she was exhausted and panting, she paused, wiped her brow, and half-turned.

And saw that she had an audience.

Dameron, the boy she’d seen on her second day at Chandrila. Poe Dameron, as she learned in the following months, captain of the football team, president of the student government, and all-around-popular-guy. He was staring at her, and Rey felt her cheeks heat up and her stomach twist in a way that Kylo had never quite managed. She chucked her staff away from her angrily and turned and stomped away.

The next day, she sat by herself in the cafeteria, fiddling with the plastic wrap on the cheese sandwich she got for free from the school. Her stomach felt pinched, and so did her chest if she was being honest, but for reasons other than hunger. Rey crinkled the plastic and thought about being someplace far, far away. Maybe on an island. Or on a mountain. Or flying through space.

“Is this seat taken?”

Rey looked up to see Poe Dameron smiling at her, a tray overloaded with food in his hands. Too surprised to say anything, she shook her head, and he pulled out the chair opposite to her and sat down, plunking his tray on the table.

“I’m Poe,” he said, holding a hand out over his steaming food. Rey stared at it before she looked at his hand, and she shook that reluctantly. “Poe Dameron.”

“Rey,” she said quietly.

“Yeah, I know.” Poe shrugged and grinned at her confused expression. “I asked around about you.”

“And why would you do that?” Rey asked, already tired.

Hux had catcalled her walking home from school yesterday. Mitaka had asked her if she’d do something  _ foul  _ in exchange for money. And then there was Kylo who’d called her beautiful and never once asked her a single question past the first day they ever sat together.

Rey waited for Poe to give her some kind of stupid line, too.

“Because.” Poe began to cut his pizza slice in half. “You looked like you wanted to murder Kylo Ren, and I’m all for that.” She snorted, not expecting that, and shook her head. “Of course, that’s not even his  _ real  _ name, now is it?”

“No.” Rey hid a smile well after years of practice. “But he doesn’t like being called Ben.”

“Oh, please.” Poe made a rude noise and finished cutting his pizza, setting his utensils aside. “He made that name out of some kind of Hot Topic meme generator. It’s like, his dad’s last name and his grandfather’s last name put together, and then he just … freakin’ swapped his first initial out with a random letter. Jesus. If I did that, I’d be … Beyaron Loe. And that’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”

“It is pretty terrible,” Rey agreed, lips twitching now.

“What would your Ren-ed name be?” Poe asked curiously.

It was clearly a ploy to get her last name, but Rey didn’t mind as much as she thought she would.

“Rey,” she said, shrugging. “I guess .. Rey would become… Bey? Mey?”

“Last name?” Poe prompted, turning pink. That was oddly sweet.

“Don’t have one.” Rey set her cheese sandwich down, her stomach curdling in embarrassment. “I’m no one.”

“No one is no one,” Poe said with all the wisdom of a seventeen year old. 

Rey ducked her head. “I am. Nobody knows me at all, or knows anything about me, so I guess that makes me no one.”

“I know at least one thing about you,” Poe interjected softly, and Rey looked up, already waiting for the  _ you’re beautiful  _ or  _ you’re cute,  _ or some other lame, garbage line that he’d use to hide the fact that he secretly agreed with her the way Kylo had agreed with her - and he’d toss her aside like everyone else, and -

“You’re pissed,” Poe said amiably, grabbing half his pizza and taking a massively large bite.

“I’m what?”

“Pissed,” Poe repeated through a full mouth. “Could see it in your face the first time you showed up in her with that jackass.” He jerked his head over Rey’s shoulder to where she knew Kylo and his crew sat. “Didn’t even get much happier after that. So yeah. I know you’re angry. And pissed. All the time. And you took it out on that dummy yesterday.”

“How-” Rey licked her lip and felt herself deflating slightly. “...how did you know that.”

“Cuz I’m angry all the time too,” Poe answered easily. He scooted the little paper basket that held the other half of his pizza toward her; the greasy cheesy smell reached her nose, and Rey felt her stomach whine in hope. “But neither of us are assholes, so we got that going for us.”

Rey actually smiled all the way at that, and she huffed a quiet, half-laugh that seemed to make Poe happy. She expected him to start talking then, but instead, he tilted his head at her binder, where she’d been doodling a series of pictures, and grinned.

“Those puffins?” He asked, jabbing his fork at it before spearing a tater tot. “Help yourself, by the way, I overdid it in the line today.” 

Rey slowly gathered a tot and took a small, delicious bite, savoring the warm salt across her tongue before nodding and tapping her binder. “They’re a special kind of puffin called Porgs. My old foster father had Nat Geo and I saw a documentary on them.”

“The one about Ahch-To?” Rey nodded to confirm, and Poe grinned. “My dad and I watched that. Wasn’t it cool?”

Rey waited a moment for him to explain his favorite part, but Poe only smiled at her encouragingly, and Rey felt her cheeks heat up before she started to talk, quietly and somewhat haltingly, about the little birds she loved so much.

They didn’t talk the full half hour but Poe seemed content to sit in silence here and there. When the warning bell sounded to tell them it was time to move to their next block, Poe gathered up the tray for them both and threw it away. They walked shoulder-to-shoulder out of the lunch room, and Poe gave her a dorky but sweet half-wave when they hit the hallway.

“I got gov,” he said, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder. “But, uh, it was really great talking to you, Rey.”

“It was nice talking to you too,” she said. She meant it.

“I’d like to get to know you better,” Poe shoved his hands in his pockets and rolled his shoulders endearingly. “If you’d ever have the time.”

“I think I can figure something out,” Rey said, surprising herself with how smoothly she came up with that. Poe grinned, his cheeks pink again, and he nodded a few times as if to himself before waving awkwardly one more time and walking down the hallway.

Rey walked by herself to her next class, but oddly enough, she didn’t feel alone for a single second. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!


End file.
